


Minho Marco

by Mad_Max



Series: dark end of the street [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Child Neglect, Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5962936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Max/pseuds/Mad_Max
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one-shot from the series 'dark end of the street'. Young Montparnasse reflects on childhood and love, or a lack thereof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minho Marco

You learn young how to keep your mouth shut. 

 

When that ragged bitch they say is your mother asks you  _ why _ you didn't bring her back no change, I gave you ten bucks, you little turd where’s my  _ goddamn money _ _;_ you keep your lips pressed together and you don’t say  _ I don’t know _ and you don’t say  _ Where the hell you think it is _ and you don’t say not a word about arcades and Coke cans and Hershey bars. And when she slaps you you don’t say  _ ow _ , and you don’t cry, and when it’s done you know you won anyway. Knowledge is power, and power is everything. 

 

One day she sent me out to cop for her because the street was too hot. She was always nervous about the heat. She said: I been to prison more times than your scrawny ass can count, get the hell out and hurry up. 

 

I didn’t mind copping because I was little, and when you’re little like that you’re still stupid to the whole world and laws and danger and how bad the food tastes in jail. Anyway everyone always said I looked like a little angel with black curls and big eyes, even she did. _At least I made you pretty. _ No one gives you trouble then. And I liked it when the woman who answered the buzzer to let me in the hall said, _ooh_ it’s that kid again. _Ooh_ your momma’s got you running her errands again, what a shame, son. What a goddamn shame.

 

I didn’t say anything about the neighbourhood being too hot and her fresh out of jail. And I didn’t say  _ fuck off _ like  _ she _ always did when I was annoying. And maybe it was half because I liked the woman with her  _ ooh _ ’s and the cakes she bought in little tubs at the bodega, and maybe it was half because I wanted her to feel sorry for me still. People do things when they feel sorry for you, especially with an angel face and black curls and big eyes, and I can look sadder than I already do, and I can look clean and beautiful and tragic like that kid, what’s his name, in that movie. 

 

Oliver Twist.

 

I must have watched that movie six hundred times, ran the tape straight down until it was crinkled and thin and snapped, and she said: goddamn you, can’t I have  _ anything _ in this house. But that was my tape that I stole from the public library way down in the city. I liked the way the kid looked with his big sad eyes and his angel face, and I liked the little suits that fit perfect even though they were all poor and the way everyone just  _ jumped _ to help him out and he never having to do anything for it apart from look sweet. And I liked that pickpocketing part, too. I liked the Dodger, but I thought, he talked too much. That’s how come he’d never get anywhere he wanted to. 

 

You can’t just go around telling people things about yourself. Once they know, they can use it all against you. People are no good like that. 

 

Anytime I ever came to cop for her there was the woman at the buzzer and the two guys in the hall, all the  _ oohs  _ and Why can’t your momma come and buy her own shit, little boy? I don’t want to go to hell, man. There’s a special place in hell for people sell shit to little kids. 

 

I just said, this is sixty dollars. 

 

He said, You get this much.

 

Last time it was more.

 

Shit, little boy. I can’t keep doing your ass favours, man. 

 

You’re not, I said. I’m paying. 

 

Shit, kid. You better grow up and be a lawyer. Fuck me. I’m going to hell. I’m going to hell a poor man. Don’t look at me like that with your face. Fuck me, I gotta sell to little kids, I should at least be making money off it. 

 

Every time he’d reach down and put everything in my pocket himself, and I’d reach in to count. He said: Tell your momma that’s fire right there. That shit is pure fire. 

 

I wasn’t going to tell her anything. She’d get hers and I had my extra ten dollars to hide down under the insert in my shoe. That’s business. That’s why you keep your mouth shut. You have mystery, and mystery is power, and power is money and things. 

 

That day I had about eighty dollars in my shoe because she found the spot before and took all I had saved up and screamed and screamed about holding out and where the hell did you get this, you shit, you turd, you waste, my money in his shoe, in his fucking shoe, my own goddamn money that selfish little prick. With all her screaming she made the dog bark downstairs, and there was the guy just moved in across the hall with his nose at the door, and he made the call though no one would tell me who it was. I knew it was him, because he was from Ohio and not the city or Long Island or anything close enough like that to know better. I heard his dad talking on the stairs when they moved him in, all his ugly furniture and his sweatpants, and he said, it’s a far cry from Ohio, huh? 

 

I hope he went back to Ohio and died there. 

 

After all her screaming I hid my shoes every night and I started to save up again. That was a big loss. I was mad at her, taking all my savings and blowing them on Parliaments and dope and drinks. I had to start saving again from scratch, which would take forever, and I felt like I’d never get out or away at that point. I don’t know how people do it with big money. All those people in suits with savings accounts and piles of cash and numbers on screens that grow and grow. I wished I knew. I wished she’d just up and die, but I still needed her to send me out to cop for her so I could siphon off  my tip and hide it in my shoe until I was rich, and then I’d get the fuck out of there.

 

That day I came back, and the hall was busy with little kids and women making all those chitchatty birdsong sounds with their hands over their mouths. All the weeks after I kept thinking, I should have known. I should have run. But I walked stupid right through the front door, opened it with my own key, and I didn’t think it was weird she wasn’t right there breathing down my neck wanting to know, what took you so long, did you get my shit, did you get followed, did you did you did you. Sometimes she’d get so sick waiting and fiending and dig up something for herself in the meantime. Then it would be quiet, and she should would be in her room with the TV on and the fan blowing her hair into her droopy eyes, and she’d smile at me that palsy smile, like half her face wanted to drip right off and her eyelids fluttering and her head nodding off and on, and she’d say all slow and thick: 

 

Oh baby, she’d say. My pret-ty baby. Minho Marco. Such a pret-ty face like your dad-dy, Marcel-ino.  _ Just _ like your daddy. Oh baby. 

 

Only this time her fan was off and the TV sounds were turned low instead of blaring, and the dumpy little woman in the kitchen said, Oh, you must be Marcelo. 

 

That’s all they say ‘you must be this, you must be that’. They load you into a van and drive you off to sit on a hard chair for hours and  _ oh _ , you must be so tired. You must be so hungry. You must be so scared, but don’t worry. Your mommy is going away for a little while; do you know your grandmother? Don’t worry, they say, and you don’t say, I’m not. And you don’t say, why did you take her before I could get to a hundred, or, was it that kid across the hall? From Ohio? And when they drop you off in a tiny little apartment in Queens with a shrivelled little woman they say is your grandmother, and she gives you cakes and milk and pets your hair and says, Thank God, Thank God, Marco and So pretty, Marco, like your father, Marcelino; you know you won anyway. It’s powerful to be loved.

 

I’d never say that either. Not out loud. I’d never say to the grandmother when she bought Fruity Pebbles that they were my favourite. She bought them anyway. And she said, I love you Tommy, I love you Lando, I love you Patricia, I love you Mário, I love you Marco, but I didn’t say, I love you Vovó. I didn’t tell her that I loved the Fruity Pebbles and her hands in my hair and the TV that only played old tapes, and I didn’t tell her thank you for my tapes, for my clothes. Thanks you didn’t steal my money. Thanks, I love you. I didn't know. 

 

When they came it was to school, in a little conference room in the office, me and Lando and Patti and Mário and the teachers and the principal and the cops and a dumpy little woman who said, your grandmother is very old, and we are concerned….

 

Lando said, She’s fine. She walks every day.

 

And Patti said, She’s not that old. She’s only eighty. You could live to a hundred and twenty, miss, I saw it on TV. 

 

Mário: Why you gotta be all concerned  _ now _ when we’re happy?  _ Man _ . 

  
I thought, she’s old but she cleans and cooks and buys cereal, and she can sing in tune, and she wears nice clothes. But I didn’t say, it’s not fair, and the grandmother is old and she might die without us, she might get sick without us, she’ll fiend for us because she loves us too much, like a drug. And I didn’t say anything about the big bed on weekends with her and me and Lando and Mário and Patti and Tommy all squeezed in and being smashed all up against the window and Lando’s back and our legs all tangled in the covers and laughing and laughing against the cold glass on one side and the warm, and I didn’t say it. Not any of it. I got two years with the grandmother and sometimes I still think of her. Sometimes I see her sitting at a bus stop, see her name written all over some other old woman’s face, and I wonder would it make any difference having all the power in the world if you’re still alone at the end of it. 


End file.
